[thelist] My ongoing problem with Google and the Studio Stitchessite

Damien COLA damiencola at wanadoo.fr
Sun Feb 8 20:27:10 CST 2004


Hi Jane
several things are wrong :
the title of your page is too long.
the longer a title the less each keyword has weight when displaying
result.
ie : if you have "stitches" as the title, then "stitches" will be
weighed a lot more than if you have your current title : "Needlepoint
Designs by Studio Stitches - Contemporary Needlepoint Designs for Sale,
contemporary, modern, needlepoint, designs, sale, needlepoint,
needlework, tapestry, stitching, kit, crafts, canvas, cross stitch,
stitches, patterns, tapestries, tapestry, cross stitching, stitching,
embroidery, needlecraft" !!!!

Plus, another thing : don't repeat a keyword more than once in title,
keywords and description meta tags.. It's of no use, and in your case
(several keywords repeated) it plays against your page.

Also, you said you've put a proper HTML linking at the end, but it's at
the end, it doesn't help either.

In your head meta tags **ADD** those two :
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="index, follow">
<meta name="Revisit-after" content="7 days">

ROBOTS is the most important, it clearly indicates what the robot should
do : INDEX the page and FOLLOW the links.

Look at your DESCRIPTION meta tag :
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="needlepoint, designs, for sale, studio
stiches stitching, needlework, kit">
Can't you find something better for a description ?
Try to make english sentences using your keywords.

ALSO, one important thing :
in your body you state : 
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
and somewhere later, you use this old-dated spammer trick :
<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">needlepoint kits for sale needlepoint
kits needlepoint crossstitch tapestry embroidery</font>

Please don't underestimate your "enemy" (ugly google) and use LINKED CSS
instead to set the hidden keywords color..

If I was google I'd put a very bad point to any site still using this
trick. That's what they must already do.

Then, the google bot meets this block of text :
<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1"> <font size="-7" face="Arial, Helvetica,
sans-serif">needlework 
              needle work needlepoint needle point contemporary
needlepoint designs 
              for sale tapestry crafts cross stitch cross-stitch
crossstitch needlepoint 
              kits needlepoint patterns needlepoint canvas affordable
needlepoint 
              kits needlework needlework kits tapestry kits cross
stitching patterns 
              needlecraft embroidery modern tapestries cross stitching
</font></font>

and down you go..

at the very end of the page you finally put your proper HTML links :
<a href="http://www.studiostitches.com.au/index.htm"><font
face="Arial">home</font></a> 
  <font face="Arial"><a
href="http://www.studiostitches.com.au/catalogue.htm">catalogue</a> 
  <a href="http://www.studiostitches.com.au/orders.htm">order</a> <a
href="http://www.studiostitches.com.au/contact.htm">contact</a>

but the word linking to each page is important and here we have : home -
catalogue - order - contact.
nothing that will help your pages..

--
If you want to increase your ranking, follow the advices in my post for
a start, and then try this trick :
put some of your keywords and some links to your other pages with
keyword as text link in a DIV at the very beginning of your BODY tag :
<body>
<div id="iluvgoogle" style="z-index:1; visibility: hidden;">
<H1>Some keywords</H1><br />
Some SENTENCES using your keywords<br />
And links <a href="yourpage.htm">SOME KEYWORDS THAT WE CAN FIND BOTH IN
**THE LINKED PAGE** and **THIS PAGE**
</div>

why google bot cannot weight bad your page for the DIV trick and they
surely can for your FONT COLOR trick ? Because a div with display:
hidden can be part of a legitimate design, VERY LESS SO a white text on
a white background. Of course there can be exceptions, but the general
rule is that when a text is of the same color of the background, then
it's for spam..

ABOUT YOUR OTHER PAGES :
you want them indexed by google, then do the same META TAGS, and SPAM
WORK and links back to index with proper WORDS AS LINKS that you do in
your first page.
In particular make sure you have the same keywords in your contact page
(for example) as you have in the index page, and of course on the WORD
AS LINK for the contact page. 

Cheers,
Damien

ps: don't write the list next week to tell about your google ranking,
because after you've done good changes you should wait ONE month before
worrying again.

-----Original Message-----
Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions, however the problem remains.

If anyone has any other suggestion I would be most grateful



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